Alchemical Sublimation and the White Work

fails thus to see the light, while in the latter the alchemist succeeds in rising to the white. Let us try to better understand the meaning of these sublimations which sometimes also go by the name of "production of Silver" or "flights of Eagles". The idea seems very simple: in the image above, there are doves rising to heaven carrying ampules and other doves descending to earth bringing new ampules. The doves or eagles that fly would represent, according to some interpreters, the spirit which, having freed the fetid spirit from its leprous shells that constituted an obstacle by clinging to it, is ready to free itself in more ethereal worlds. The spirit, ready to free itself as soon as it is provided with the means, cannot, however, completely abandon the body, but clothes itself with a garment more suited to its nature, more obedient to its will, and made with the clean and purified particles that it can gather around itself, to use them as a new vehicle [...] Then it assumes, by coagulating, a blinding white color and its separation from the mass is made easier - Fulcanelli, The Dwellings of the Philosophers. This threshold that the individual manages to cross thus constitutes itself as body when the spirit rises to the superior worlds and in doing so purifies itself thus progressively forming a body of glorious resurrection. Subsequently it seems that there must then be a return to the body and a consequent resolution of it: "Every flesh born from the earth will be destroyed and then newly returned to the earth; since it was earth before, then the terrestrial salt gives a new generation with the celestial breath of life. Where indeed there was not earth before, the resurrection of our work cannot follow" - B. Valentino op.cit. IV key IX. In this regard, we find it useful to report a passage by S. de Guaita that seems to also refer to this process when he says: "The Truth is that the Sage, to elaborate his glorious body here below, must somehow make the perishable astral body [de Guaita calls astral body the vital element] re-enter the material organism, which, far from suffering from it, will become more subtle [spiritualize the body]. This reabsorption can only take place very slowly, and, so to speak, atom by atom. As an astral molecule is assimilated in the physical body, it will eliminate a molecule of its coarsest substance. Inversely, as the astral body is reabsorbed, the glorious form, developing little by little, will occupy the place left free. At the death of the Sage, all that is mortal, the material organism and the fused astral body will dissolve together and the soul clothed in the glorious form of the elect, will be immediately assumed into the kingdom of pure Ether" - S. de Guaita. Fulcanelli in this regard says: "the body has spiritualized itself, and the metallic soul, abandoning its dirty garment, clothes itself in another of greater value, to which the ancient masters gave the name of philosophical mercury (...) composed of fixed and volatile, not yet radically united, but susceptible to coagulation" - The Dwellings of the Philosophers. THE WHITE WORK When the dark fetid spirit is repelled [the entity we spoke of previously], so much so that neither its smell remains [even the characteristics remain the same: the nauseating and toxic odor], nor the dark color, then the body becomes luminous, the soul rejoices and with them the spirit. "Once the shadow of the body is banished [term also used later to always indicate this entity still in a crude and leprous state], the soul calls this body that has become luminous [this same body that has undergone a transformation] and says to it: 'awaken from the depths of Hades, rise from the darkness; awaken bursting forth from the darkness. For you have assumed the divine spiritual State: the voice of resurrection has spoken; the medicine of life has penetrated you'" - Comarius. or "you will see the philosopher's stone, our king, raised above the rulers of the world, emerge from his vitreous sepulcher, rise from his bed and come onto the world scene in his glorified body, that is, regenerated and more than perfect; continuous, diaphanous like crystal, compact, very heavy, easily fusible in fire, like resin, fluid like wax and more than quicksilver, but without emitting any smoke, piercing penetrating solid bodies in contact, like oil penetrates paper" - Khunrath. In this phase "The philosophers also advise tearing up the books that have now become useless" - Pernety. THE RED WORK Description of Bohme's Image. The name of Jesus Christ incarnation of the Tetragram, Jesus Christ in Glory and the ladder of 72 steps, Jacob's ladder to reach such a state.